Publications

WP 2013-04. Executive Summary The critical situation of most state-pension schemes plays a key role in explaining the public-finance crises that characterize many West-European countries. Although most observers refrain from…

Leaders, institutions and markets are all looking for guidance to get out of the present crisis. Government confidence is at stake, institutions’ credibility is jeopardized and banking is close to fraud and collusion.

Nicolas Lecaussin was quoted by The Economist (July 6th – Juy12th, 2013) about a report written with Lucas Léger on French high school economic textbooks. “The IREF study last year”…

European Union finance ministers failed to reach a deal last week on this controversial issue. Germany and France are at odds about costs distribution. The Banking Union is at stake since this law on rescuing and closing banks in the EU is a key point. The problem is to know who is going to decide what will happen to a failing bank and who will pay for it.

Welcome to the clubs! Why should they join? The crisis is not over and doubts about the virtues of the EU and the euro abound. It may therefore seem surprising…

Why would you stay in a country where there are more than 200 types of taxes? And in which taxes are piled up and never removed. If French President François Hollande and his government want to fight against tax havens, French taxpayers and entrepreneurs are battling against the daily tax hell they are living in.

Competitiveness is embedded in the private sector. Employment is created only the private sector. Wealth increases through the private sector. No public intervention can manage to replace the private sector, no Government know how to make business and money. As a consequence, the real economy of a country relies on its private sector, not on the Government. Portuguese Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho understood this fact and decreased dramatically corporate tax from 25% to 7.5%.

Since events related to financial, banking, and debt crises regularly make it into the news, a term that seemingly originated from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in the late 1970s has become more popular: macroprudential supervision. Whereas microprudential supervision relates to the oversight of individual market participants (e.g. banks), macroprudential policy relates to the supervision of an entire system (e.g. the financial system).

Globalization is often associated with delocalization and unfair competition with emergent countries that are flooding us with cheap goods and services regardless of good environmental practices or social benefits these populations should enjoy, like in rich countries. Beyond this spurious assessment hinge the even more fallacious concept of reciprocity that justifies a new form of protectionism and trade tariffs. The last blow to international trade stems from Brussels and its decision to tax imports of Chinese solar panels – from 37% to 68% – even though this could beget a trade war.

The May Newsletter explains the austerity concerns heralded during April, the European Banking Union issue, the coming implementation of the Tobin Tax and the fact that there was no major banking fatalities during the month.